Five Star Final

This is an offbeat but fascinating film which pillories the transgressions of the muckraking tabloids so popular in the 1920s. Apfel is the uncaring, circulation-lusting publisher of the New York Gazette, a notorious scandal sheet, who hires Robinson, a hardworking, slightly scrupulous editor, telling him to dust off a 20-year-old murder case by infiltrating the family involved and obtaining background information. To accomplish this unsavory job, Robinson reluctantly hires Karloff, a slimy, sneaky scandalmongering reporter who pretends to be a priest while ingratiating himself to Warner and Starr; it is Starr on whom Karloff concentrates, since she had been...